Draconic Translator
Every warning DragonWatch has read off a lair mouth was written for someone who could not read it. This tool does the reading in the other direction: type a message in English and it comes back in Draconic, set in the word order, cases and tenses the field teams recorded, with every word traced to the dictionary entry it came from. Where the archive holds the exact line already, you get the recorded form.
It is a field translation, not a dragon’s. Dragons compress; they drop what the listener should already know. What you get here is the plain, complete form a field agent would carve to be understood, and the table under the result says which words are documented, which are grammar, and which have no Draconic form yet.
come-IMPF storm
How a field translation is built
Draconic puts the verb first, then who acts, then what is acted on: skor si sker-ot, “see I enemy”. The ending -ot marks the thing acted on, -eth the owner, -ur the one something is given to, -ik more than one. There are no words for the or a. ta- puts a verb in the past and na- in the future; nokh before the verb says it did not happen, and ma before a bare verb forbids it. A question opens with ka, or with the question word itself. The grammar reference has the full account, recorded form by recorded form.
The dialect tabs apply what the field teams recorded of each family’s grammar (grammar §12). Chromatic speech drops the object ending and the copula and ends almost every line with the emphatic kha: terse, and phrased as an order. Metallic speech softens a command to an advisory subjunctive and honours the listener with -khe. Gem speech marks every statement as witnessed, -él with the high tone of confidence, and puts a classifier before every noun: ·therk for the living, ·stor for the material, ·khesh for the abstract. The sounds are not changed, only the grammar; the recorded phrase variants in the inscription gallery follow the same conventions.
Each word in a result carries one of these labels:
| Label | What it means |
|---|---|
| recorded | The whole line is in the phrase bank exactly as DragonWatch recorded it. |
| dictionary | A documented root, or a compound built from documented roots the way dragons build them: modifier first, head last. A bridge is shemtreth, river-path. |
| grammar | A particle, case ending, tense prefix or pronoun from the grammar. |
| name lexicon | Taken from the lexicon behind the name tool, which maps meanings poetically. It fills a gap, but read the gloss before you carve it. |
| no word yet | No Draconic form is recorded. The word stays in brackets and the claw-script line leaves a gap. |
| by sound | A name, rendered sound for sound by the transliteration protocol. Dragons do not do this; they translate the meaning. |
Lines field agents learn first
The one word every agent learns first is thes, peace. These are the next ones. The first two are recorded phrases; the rest are field translations built by the same rules the tool applies to whatever you type.
| English | Draconic | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| I am a friend. | es reth si. | be friend I |
| Do not take. | ma koz. | PROHIB take |
| Do not enter. | ma gor enk. | PROHIB come inside |
| Beware the dragon. | gekh khath-ot. | fear dragon-ACC |
| Who guards the gate? | sho sherth trethskorth-ot? | who defend path-boundary-ACC |
| My hoard is not for you. | nokh es drosh si.eth tel thi. | NEG be hoard I-GEN in-order-to you |
| The enemy will come. | na-gor sker. | FUT-come enemy |
| Rest in peace, brother. | nulv enk thes, drakhreth. | sleep inside peace | blood-friend |
What it cannot do yet
The archive is a working record, not a complete language, and the tool says so rather than guessing. Counting words such as both, either, half and at least have no recorded treatment and stay in brackets. Names are rendered by sound and labelled as such, the way the name tool’s fallback works; a dragon would translate the name’s meaning instead, and that tool does. A line that comes back with every word labelled dictionary or grammar can be carved as it stands; one with a name lexicon label deserves a second look at the gloss.
Explore Draconic
- Draconic Inscriptions — carve a phrase in the claw script and print it as a handout
- Your Name in Draconic — what a dragon would call you
- Draconic Dictionary — 259 documented vocabulary roots
- Grammar Reference — how dragons structure language
- Draconic Script — the claw-carved writing system
- Draconic Language — sounds, dialects and the field reference